Christmas is a time of year that draws strong reactions from a wide range of people. As much as it is a time for family and theoretically to be enjoyed, Christmas does have its opponents. Or, to be more accurate, there are people who are thoroughly displeased by the idea of a holiday which used to be about family togetherness and happiness being turned into a corporate festival which relies on rampant consumerism. Looking at the supermarkets which have Christmas related lines on their shelves from September onwards it is not hard to understand their points.
However it is inevitable that this kind of commercialism will take a grip on a holiday where gifts play a major part. Knowing that people will spend money to get the best gift for those who they love, the companies with something to sell will put a lot of their advertising budget into the Christmas period. The inevitable knock-on effect is that other companies will do the same to compete. Add this to an element of competition among families to get the "best" (read: most expensive) gifts, and you have a recipe for a commercial holiday.
Is it possible to have a Christmas holiday without being carried along on the waves of consumerism? Well, yes, of course it is. It is important to keep the message firm in your family, that Christmas is about people and not products. Gifts are wonderful, no doubt. But without the emotion behind them, they are still just things.
If you were to run a word association exercise where you say one word and your counterpart says an associated word, then the word "Christmas" could have a series of associated terms. One person will say "tree", another will say "present", and still others will say "decoration". Some people, conscious of what they will be getting up to in the run-up to Christmas, will supply the word "shopping", because Christmas makes a lot of people think about what they will be buying for others. Some people love it, others hate it. but if you do not want to be considered a "Scrooge", then you will not be able to avoid Christmas shopping.
Christmas shopping is something which has many different approaches that can be applied to it. The fact is that many people leave their shopping to the final few weeks before the holiday, and when the things that they are looking for turn out to be in short supply they curse that course of action. Others do their shopping in advance, by a few months (and some even do it in the January sales), but this can demand a level of prescience that most of us do not have.
If you embark on a relationship in the weeks running up to Christmas, you will then be forced into coming up with a gift that will keep the relationship running smoothly. Should you use the Internet to buy it, knowing that it will be in stock but may not be delivered on time? Or should you brave the crowds and go into the stores to look for the right gift? Only you can decide.
However it is inevitable that this kind of commercialism will take a grip on a holiday where gifts play a major part. Knowing that people will spend money to get the best gift for those who they love, the companies with something to sell will put a lot of their advertising budget into the Christmas period. The inevitable knock-on effect is that other companies will do the same to compete. Add this to an element of competition among families to get the "best" (read: most expensive) gifts, and you have a recipe for a commercial holiday.
Is it possible to have a Christmas holiday without being carried along on the waves of consumerism? Well, yes, of course it is. It is important to keep the message firm in your family, that Christmas is about people and not products. Gifts are wonderful, no doubt. But without the emotion behind them, they are still just things.
If you were to run a word association exercise where you say one word and your counterpart says an associated word, then the word "Christmas" could have a series of associated terms. One person will say "tree", another will say "present", and still others will say "decoration". Some people, conscious of what they will be getting up to in the run-up to Christmas, will supply the word "shopping", because Christmas makes a lot of people think about what they will be buying for others. Some people love it, others hate it. but if you do not want to be considered a "Scrooge", then you will not be able to avoid Christmas shopping.
Christmas shopping is something which has many different approaches that can be applied to it. The fact is that many people leave their shopping to the final few weeks before the holiday, and when the things that they are looking for turn out to be in short supply they curse that course of action. Others do their shopping in advance, by a few months (and some even do it in the January sales), but this can demand a level of prescience that most of us do not have.
If you embark on a relationship in the weeks running up to Christmas, you will then be forced into coming up with a gift that will keep the relationship running smoothly. Should you use the Internet to buy it, knowing that it will be in stock but may not be delivered on time? Or should you brave the crowds and go into the stores to look for the right gift? Only you can decide.
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